Sorry I've been away for a couple of days. So what did I miss? Ah, yeah. Meryl Streep 's speech at the National Board of Review awards. Where -- before she handed Emma Thompson the best actress award for her stellar performance in " Saving Mr. Banks " -- Streep first went out of her...

So what does it actually take for D23 to pull together those Fanniversary events that they've been presenting around the country for the past few weeks? According to Jeffrey Epstein, spokesman for the Official Disney Fan Club, it takes a solid six months of behind-the-scenes effort to produce each...

I have to admit that I'm kind of a sucker for all of these castle shows that Disney has begun doing in the Magic Kingdom . Whether it's draping this iconic structure with over 200,000 lights to turn it into a wintery wonder for the "Cinderella's Holiday Wish / Castle Dream Lights"...

The old adage is "April Showers bring May Flowers." Image courtesy of S/R Laboratories. All rights reserved Well, Nancy and I are down in Orlando right now. And this year, April Showers seems to be bringing May Downpours. Which suggests that June might be a really good time to go shopping for...

Why For: Disney theme park character costumes throughout the years DisneyWhirl sent me an e-mail yesterday to say: I got into the Town Square Theater today during its soft opening and the new Mickey meet-and-greet that the Imagineers built there is amazing. It's loaded with all sorts of great Disney...

Are you looking forward to " Rango " ? Copyright 2010 Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved I know that I am. And not just because this project reunites Johnny Depp with his " Pirates of the Caribbean " director, Gore Verbinski . Or because this Paramount Pictures will be ILM 's...

Hey, gang. My apologies if JHM seems to have been running at half speed for the past 10 days or so. But after spending October 8 - 10 th in the Big Apple covering New York Comic Con , I came down with a bad case of Convention Crud. Which is the Pop Culture equivalent of Kennel Cough. Anyway, what with...

Trina P. wrote in to say: Thanks for sharing those pictures from the Tim Burton exhibition at the MoMA . I’m a huge Burton fan and had wanted to get down to NYC while that exhibit was there, but never found the time. I noticed that you had a lot of pictures from Tim Burton movies that never got made...

"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop." Said by the King to the White Rabbit in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” Okay. Then let’s start with the obvious. Which is that – up until now – there really hasn’t been a good movie version of “Alice in Wonderland...

It’s always been one of the great what-ifs of Disney history. What if … All of the Studio’s overseas markets hadn’t been cut off by the start of World War II? It’s well known that – as of the late 1930s -- Walt was well into development of full-length animated versions of “ Alice in Wonderland ,” “ Peter...

You’ve going to have to forgive any animation fans you know if they seem kind of distracted today. You see, S/R Laboratories is holds its biannual animation art auction today and tomorrow. Which means that some incredibly rare pieces of animation history are about come up for bid. “How rare?,” you ask...

We're still six weeks out from the release of the diamond edition of " Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ." But some of the merchandise that's supposed to piggyback on the hi-def Blu-ray version of this Disney Classic is already starting to show up in stores. With Cynthia Rylant & Gustaf Tenggren ...

When talking about the Walt Disney Company’s origins, the cliché that people usually default to is “It all started with a Mouse.” Which isn’t exactly true. A full five years before Mickey came on the scene, Walt was trying to get his “Alice Comedies” series off the ground. And the little girl that Disney...

Anne L. writes in to ask: "This past week, I couldn't help but notice that -- out of all the major Disneyana sites on the Web -- JHM is the only one that hasn't mentioned DCA 's Blue Sky Cellar yet. Why is that?" To be honest, Anne, you kind of answered your own question. Given that everyone else out...

Forget about " When Harry Met Sally ." You want to talk about a truly magical movie moment? Then let's discuss when Mary met Alice. To be specific, when Mary Blair was assigned to work on Disney's animated adaptation of " Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ." Ever since May of 1938, when the Studio had...

This is probably going to seem like a very weird request. But -- if you could -- I'd really like it if you guys could buy up a bunch of copies of " Walt Disney's Cinderella " (Disney Press, August 2007) Copyright 2007 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved "And why should we do that?," you ask...